With Apologies to Douglas Adams
by Aromene
Summary: It was a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Neither Stargate: Atlantis nor A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are mine. Alas, alas, life just isn't fair.**

**AN: Apparently, I'm not above stealing from just about anyone. Apologies to Douglas Adams, but he really is just that good. Warning: complete and utter crack fic. I was on drugs, I swear!** **The title and summary are Kate's fault.**

**Summary: It was a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.**

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**With Apologies to Douglas Adams**

It can be said, in plain and very basic terms that in the beginning the universe was created. Of course, this amazing event was thereafter frowned upon as a generally bad move, and people were want to blame all of their troubles on the Big Bang. As if an unforeseen and purely accidental event could be blamed for the fact that a man in Surrey left his wife yesterday because he returned home from work to find her in a thoroughly uncomfortable looking position with his neighbor.

But people have almost always found it better to blame anyone else than themselves when things got a little hairy.

Now, for one, Dr. M. Rodney McKay, currently resident in the small and little known dwarf galaxy that someone in their stupendous idiocy had named Pegasus (as if a galaxy could sprout wings a fly), didn't much hold to blaming cosmic events for his life problems when people were more plentiful and thoroughly more satisfying to yell at.

Which was exactly what was happening on this perfect summer's day with a warm sea breeze wafting up from the ocean through the open window that someone (who would soon be regretting ever having been born) had opened. Seeing as it was already late morning, and the good Doctor had already partaken of his fifth cup of the caffeinated beverage that earthlings insist on calling coffee, he was in quite fine form.

Of course, because the Laws of the Universe – which were many and varied and mostly completely misunderstood – were always fond of choosing the most particularly inopportune moments to exact their revenge, the Doctor's long and very beautiful monologue on the stupidity of his underlings was unfortunately cut rather short by the sudden and utter destruction of the planet on which he stood.

But as anyone who has ever had the momentous privilege of stepping through a Stargate will tell you, such things are not always as they seem.

Certainly the planet seemingly vanished into nothingness, but in a truly miraculous moment, the great shield that protected the city from all manner of nasty things activated of its own accord and thus saved the only flying city in existence from a rather horrible fate.

Without doubt, if not for this singular event, the poor underling to whom the Doctor had taken such affront would surely have soon thrown himself off the nearest balcony to the turbid waters below in a sudden and desperate attempt to save himself from his brain combusting. As it was, the sudden (and catastrophic it may be said) event had such a profound impact on the Doctor, that he instantly forgot the poor underling and everyone else who had ever worked for him.

Accordingly (if for a moment you dared to think that this event was the worst thing that happened today), some four galaxies over a baby hrugul was torn to pieces in front of its mother by a rabid and thoroughly vicious kroon. Afterwards the mother killed herself by jumping off the nearest cliff because she couldn't bear the thought of living without her offspring.

But since Dr. McKay was not aware of this simply awful event some five hundred kiloparsecs away, he chose (rightly) to believe that he was having the worst day of anyone in the whole universe.

He had no idea, of course, that it was about to get worse. Such foresight is forbidden to the lower races because they would utterly destroy themselves attempting to change that which cannot be changed.

Not that that had ever stopped Rodney McKay.

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Alright folks, this is a comment fic. I'd love to hear ideas or stories or just about anything. Take this and run with it. And have fun; I did. 

Arómenë © 2007


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Neither ****Stargate****: Atlantis nor The**** Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are mine.**

**AN: Part the Second. Of, I have no idea.**

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His first and immediate reaction was to assume it was all a huge and elaborate hallucination and that he'd be waking up any minute in the infirmary having obviously passed out. 

His second reaction, upon pinching himself quite hard on the thigh, was that he really needed to stop drinking so much coffee in the morning. Clearly the amount of caffeine was starting to affect his precious and irreplaceable brain.

Having gone through these first two reactions in the space of time it takes most modern computers to open a single word processing file, his final reaction was much more thought through and much nearer the mark.

"Alright, which one of you idiots pressed a button I specifically told you not to press?" He had, it must be told, by this time not yet realized that the entire planet had suddenly vaporized and was only just working with the knowledge that someone had activated the shield. The aforementioned window being behind him, of course, so that he was unable to see the vast nothingness of space floating outside.

However, when the only answer came over the small headset he wore and not from the dozen or so people standing in front of him, he began to undergo that slight feeling of panic that humans suffer from when they aren't exactly certain was has happened, but begin to assume that whatever it is is truly disastrous.

"Rodney, could you possible explain to me why we are suddenly in space?" The voice belonged to that of their heroic and suicidal (it may be said outside of his hearing) military leader.

This comment prompted the Doctor to turn around and stare in something between shock and amazement at the window situated behind him. As if this small motion was enough to bring home the enormity of the situation to everyone in the room, the volume level suddenly spiked to nearly 150 decibels (roughly equivalent to having a jet liner take off next to your ear) and the Doctor's exclamation of terror was simply drowned out.

Once some sense of normalcy had returned to the room, some length of time later, the Doctor became aware that a constant and now grating voice was screaming in his ear. Annoyed, because there was no knowing what kind of long term hearing damage that could do, Doctor McKay promptly informed the occupants of the room, as well as those listening over the radio channels to kindly and immediately Shut Up.

The desired effect was certainly spectacular. One might have been able to hear a pin drop if the floor had not been made out of a common and thoroughly ingenious Ancient alloy that masked even the noise of human footfalls (which can be quite loud when they have the desire). As it was, instead of a pin, those listening closely could discern the sound of wheels cranking away in the good Doctor's head as he tried in vain to rationalize an explanation for the sudden disappearance of an entire planet (when he was completely certain he had no responsibility for at all). For many this was all the proof needed that their head of department had previously been kidnapped by aliens and his brain supplanted with a far more advanced computer than anything a lowly earthling could dream up. Once again, the underlings were justified in believing they weren't as stupid as their boss kept telling them they were.

Which really just goes to show how stupid they actually were. However, on a topic of somewhat more importance to the situation at hand, Doctor McKay at that very moment came up with a completely empirical answer to the question at hand.

"Amazing! The Ancients were able to devise a way to render a whole planet invisible! The Wraith will never be able to find us! Now, if I can just figure out the sequence to input into the computer to..."

Busily typing away he trailed off in mid sentence. His underlings drew a collective breath...

"Oh no. Oh, that is not good."

...and promptly fled the room.

Left in a now abandoned lab with pieces of paper floating about from where they had been knocked off desks during the mad dash of the less intelligent from the room, the enormity of the situation finally hit home.

"Rodney, perhaps you'd like to share with the class?"

The Doctor resisted the urge to smash his headset underneath the heal of his boot.

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Aromene (c) 2007 


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: ****Neither Stargate: Atlantis nor ****The**** Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are mine.**

**AN: Hey, look, fic! Part the Third. Of, I really have no idea.

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**

The Doctor continued to stand motionless, staring at the empty room, for another moment.

"RODNEY!" Clearly the patience level of one, Lt. Col. John Sheppard had finally reached its breaking point.

"Coming." Doctor McKay glanced absently around the room, collected a data pad and walked out without one backwards glance at the rather large glass window that he had chosen to studiously ignore until such a time as the situation was resolved and said window did not show its current star-spangled view.

They were waiting. The astrophysicist from the cold and rather unappealing Earth country known as Canada was used to this. People had been waiting on his every word his entire life. He quite liked it, actually.

Except at those few (and if anyone asked him: never) occasions when he was not in command of all of the facts nor had his brilliant mind come up with an even more brilliant plan as to how they were going to get themselves out of the current mess they were in.

Those six persons considered to be 'in the know' as it were (not including Doctor McKay who was always the first to know anything) stared at him. The Doctor stared back.

After a tense minute passed when neither side had showed any sign of giving quarter or leniency or anything else you might be thinking, the Canadian sighed.

"Well, we seem to have a slight situation, and when I say slight I mean, of course, _disastrous_, but I'm sure you can figure that out on your own. The planet" – which was never named and perhaps if it had been none of this would have happened and you, dear reader, would not be reading this story at all but rather something else about penguins and ice and be much more bored than you currently are – "has disappeared."

There was a pause. One of those long and pregnant pauses which are awkward for all involved but certainly necessary in order to increase the dramatic effect of the sentence.

"Yes Rodney, we know." This should, of course, have been fairly obvious, but John Sheppard had always excelled at stating that which did not need to be stated.

"Yes, well, when I say disappeared I mean actually _gone_. It's like it never even existed, which is impossible, because things just don't go _poof_" and here he added extremely exaggerated hand gestures in order to make his point that much clearer.

"Have we moved?" Doctor Elizabeth Weir, their much esteemed and very beautiful leader was ever the ration one when need called for it.

Doctor McKay looked at her as if he had never seen her like before in the entire universe.

"Moved?"

"Is our stellar location the same or have we been" and here she tried and failed for a word that did not sound nearly as ludicrous as "transported?"

"No, we haven't moved." And that, as they say, was the end of that.

"I do not understand." That would be Teyla Emmagan, the gorgeous (although Rodney would never tell her that to her face for fear of his life) alien who Sheppard had picked up within five hours of arriving in the bloody galaxy, and wasn't that just typical. "How is it possible for an entire world to vanish?"

"I didn't say it was possible. I clearly remember using the word _impossible_!"

"Rodney." The warning was rather pointless at this particular stage, since the loss of an entire planet was rather more than the good Doctor's sanity could endure and he was already well on his way to a mad descent into hysterics. Because no crisis situation is quite complete until someone looses it completely.

"I DON'T KNOW!"

Silence. Utter, impenetrable, silence. Again with the pin.

"Well, that's a problem."

John Sheppard had always excelled at stating the obvious.

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Arómenë © 2007 


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: Neither Stargate: Atlantis nor ****The**** Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are mine.**

**AN: Part the Fourth. Of, I still have no idea.

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**

"You're sure it's not just invisible?"

Rodney McKay looked, for the first time in his life, ready to kill with his bare hands.

"Right," the Colonel answered for himself.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps we should all sit down and think this through – rationally." That sounded like an amazingly logical idea. It also allowed the good Doctor an extra moment to retrieve the the jagged pieces of what was left of his sanity.

"Is it possible this is some safe-guard or other the Ancients themselves put into place?" Doctor Weir asked. It was, all around, a generally good thought since it succeeded in two rather spectacularly sound ways: one, it meant the situation was probably understandable if not fixable, and two, that it was most certainly _not their fault_.

So, of course, it was the perfect reasoning for Rodney McKay, who had already come to the conclusion that neither of his hands nor his brain had in any way been responsible for this particular situation.

In response he began typing furiously on his data pad, mumbling along all the while in a language that wasn't entirely English or really belonged to any culture in the known (or unknown) universe. It's a well regarded fact that all genius will, at some point in their lives, develop a language that only they can understand in a vain attempt to distance themselves from all below them. Really, it was just a way to make them look smarter by confusing everyone else.

It never failed to work. This situation being a excellent example, since everyone in the room was certain the the vague mumblings meant that the Doctor had come up with an understanding of the problem and was quickly working towards a solution that would set everything to rights.

"Huh."

Or not.

"Right, well, I suppose it all had to end sometime. Good day for it." The sarcasm dripping from John Sheppard's voice would have been clear to a very dimwitted Hydoxeen (who are famous for being the stupidest creatures in all of existence). However, it was lost on Doctor McKay, who was clearly not listening.

"The planet still exists."

Stunned silence. Hadn't they recently had this very same conversation?

"Rodney..." Six very different voices ground out in varying degrees of an emotion suspiciously close to annoyed.

"Right. Well, the planet exists, and the city exists, and technically neither of them – us- have moved."

"Then where is _the planet_?"

"No idea. I'm just explaining that it still exists. Hasn't gone bye-bye, poof, boom, or any other childish sounding word you'd care to use. It is still completely intact and probably quite safe..."

A pause.

"Somewhere else."

"And how does that help us?" Their fearless leader ground out between gnashing teeth; a sound that didn't at all suit her.

"Well, if it exists somewhere then all we have to do is find it."

John Sheppard took a deep breath and opened his mouth to declare, in true fashion, the obvious flaw in that statement. The Doctor wasn't about to let him get away with it again.

"It exists right here, right where we left it – or it left us – and it is has neither moved nor vanished nor disappeared. Well, it has disappeared, in the literally sense of the word, but that implies it's gone completely and I've just explained that it hasn't."

"You mean it's in another dimension?"

Six heads swung round to stare in shocked dismay at the Colonel's tried and true second-in-command.

"What?" said second-in-command stared back, "I watch a lot of sci-fi."

The Doctor seemed incapable of forming words, though his mouth was moving in a rather excellent representation of a fish.

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Arómenë © 2008 


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: ****Neither Stargate: Atlantis nor ****The**** Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are mine.**

**AN: Part Five. ****Nope, no idea.**** I am also unhappy with this, but despite two re-writes, I just can't get it to sound more Adams-y. I'll do better next time.

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**

"Is he right?" The Colonel asked in a voice full of disbelief. His second-in-command looked mildly affronted at this. It's not like he'd never had a brilliant idea before.

"Yes." The word is strangled and whispered and it looked like it actually caused the Doctor pain to manage it.

"Theoretically or practically?"

Doctor Weir helpfully glared at Sheppard so that Doctor McKay did not have to.

"Just wondering," he amended.

"Yes." This time the word is clearly spoken. "According to the information I've been able to glean from the sensor readings, computer data and all those other lovely systems the Ancients so helpfully designed. The Ancients, bless their little meddling hearts, managed to engineer something that acts like a quantum mirror except on a scale so vast it's like nothing we ever even imagined before. It really shouldn't be possible."

Doctor McKay was rather fond of this last sentence. He was often heard reciting it in regards to anything that he did not fully understand or had not thought of first. Mostly it was the second option.

"But it clearly is, so perhaps we can move past that?"

"Yes. Quite. Now, if I am indeed correct – "

"Hey," the Major interjected. "I was the one who said it!" No one paid him any mind.

" – and of course I am, there should be some way to reverse it. Of course, the problem is that I cannot be completely certain how it was _activated_ in the first place. If someone's been pressing buttons they shouldn't have (a side look at his own second-in-command who had so far been absolutely useless) or thinking thoughts they shouldn't have (a pointed glare towards the Colonel who pretended to look innocent) then it's probably just as likely to happen again."

"But if we can reverse it once, we can do it again. It we need to."

"Theoretically." The Doctor sounded resigned as he said it.

John Sheppard looked smug.

"Thank you, Doctor McKay. I suggest you and your team get to work on the problem immediately, then. I'll inform the city to kindly not panic. We should have this all sorted out in a few hours, correct?" It was said in such a way as to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that the problem would indeed be all sorted in a few hours or there would be hell to pay.

"Yes. Give me...3 hours. No problem." Which meant, of course, that there would be one.

The good Doctor and his highest ranking disciple scrambled from the room.

"So, we should have a back-up plan, right?" The Colonel asked.

The look Doctor Weir threw him clearly stated that he'd asked the obvious again. He should really stop doing that.

"I'll get to work on that then." The Colonel and Major both fled the room at roughly the same pace as the two doctors had just vacated it.

"I am certain everything will be just fine," their resident alien ambassador helpfully put in.

"I'm sure," Doctor Weir returned in a voice that left little doubt that she was in fact sure of the exact opposite. And the day had started off so promisingly.

"So, we're screwed?" The two women looked towards the last man standing.

"Ronon, I couldn't have put it better myself."

"Uh, excuse me ma'am," the current tech support appeared at the door. "Major Newton's due to check in in a few minutes. What should I tell him ma'am?"

Their leader sighed.

"Whatever you like, Chuck. Just don't tell him we lost the planet."

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Arómenë © 2008 


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:****Neither Stargate: Atlantis nor ****The**** Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are mine.**

**AN: Part the sixth of….SEVEN!**** Last part will be up sometime on the weekend. Also, I swear on my life that I wrote and posted this _before_ I watched the latest episode (Quarantine) of SGA. It's just a really great coincidence. _Really._

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**

It was exactly one hour, fifty-seven minutes, and thirty-two seconds later when Doctor McKay walked back through the door he had so abruptly left through one hour, fifty-seven minutes, and thirty-two seconds before.

"You've found the solution, then?" Doctor Weir asked.

"What? Oh, well, no, not exactly. I mean, possibly, but probably not." The Doctor was fiddling nervously with his data pad and looking like he was hoping the floor would open and swallow him whole.

"Rodney, you said you'd have something. Anything, right now, would be good. So?"

Floors have never been all that accommodating.

"Right, well, I don't think the Ancients ever intended for this thing to be activated. I mean, I don't think it's ever actually been turned on before. I'm not even sure the Ancients finished it to a point where it could be."

"How does that help us?" The Colonel asked as he breezed back into the room one hour, fifty-nine minutes, and two seconds after he'd left.

"Well, it doesn't."

"I should have qualified the 'anything' with a 'useful'. Rodney..."

"Alright, well I think – " he got no further as his second-in-command entered the room at something resembling the pace of the hundred yard dash. He skidded to a halt in front of Weir's desk, just barely avoiding toppling over one of the many prized artefacts from some world or another that their trading partners had given her.

"Yes Radek?"

"I have found answer!" He was practically jumping up and down on the spot. The good Doctor McKay looked murderous.

"Is it 42?" John Sheppard asked.

Doctor McKay took the well-deserved opportunity at this point to smack his team leader upside the head in a fitting act of revenge for many similar and painful moments suffered under the Colonel's own appendage.

"Ow!" The brave and fearless Destroyer of Wraith Queens cowered into the corner to rub his head, a motion that looked suspiciously like he was checking to make certain all strands of hair were properly placed in the disaster he called a style.

"Yes Radek?" interrupted Weir, again.

"Yes, yes. You see, I think there must be control mechanism, like Quantum Mirror, yes? I look for it and I find this!" He brandished his own data pad in triumph.

The Doctor snatched it from his hands before anyone could as much as blink and began to hum and haw over the contents.

"Hum. Yes. Humph. Ah. No, no, no. Hummmm. Huh. Yes, that just might –"

His departure was so abrupt they thought he'd simply disappeared. Which would, of course, have been impossible, but they were all having one of those days. After all, if a planet can vanish into nothingness, then an annoying and egotistical astrophysicist disappearing should be a piece of cake.

Somewhat unfortunately this was not to be, as he raced back into the room only a moment later (obviously having gone no further than the control room).

"Yes, yes! Radek has, um, that is, found something that with my own help should solve our problem."

"No, no, no. Does not need help, Rodney. Is fine. Give me data pad back."

"No." Doctor McKay looked for all the world like he was five and hording toys.

"Rodney..." The voice was exactly that of a mother dealing with a couple of bad children. Elizabeth Weir hated having to use the voice. The idea of being mother to anyone on the expedition was frightening, to say the least.

"Fine." The Doctor returned the data pad, glaring all the while. "I'll be in the lab. _My_ lab." He walked out in a huff.

His second followed with a smug grin.

"Well, since that seems to be, hopefully, taken care of. How is that back-up plan coming along, John?"

John Sheppard looked contrite. "Um, not so well. You have to understand Elizabeth. The planet's disappeared. If we can't...find it, then there's nothing else to do except find another one. But we can't actually, you know, get there. Flying city doesn't actually fly." He paused. "That sucks."

"Quite. Then let us hope Radek has solved our problem."

"Yeah."

The relative intelligence of resting all of their hopes on Radek Zelenka and an annoyed Doctor McKay was terrifying at best and royally stupid at worst. Oh, the two of them had pulled more than their collective share of asses out of various fires in the last few years, but somehow the planet disappearing was just a bit bigger than...just about _anything_.

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Arómenë ©2008 


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: ****Neither Stargate: Atlantis nor ****The**** Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are mine.**** Also, ****apparently I've stolen the summa****r****y**** of this fic from the title of a book I've never even heard of. ****Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day by****Judith ****Viorst**** does not belong to ****m****e either.**

**AN: ****Part the Last. ****Finally.**** Had I known in **_**September**_** when I posted chapter 1**** that this was a) going to be a series and b) going to take 4 bloody months to write, I probably would never have posted it in the first place. ****I don't know if any of you will be happy with this ending. I don't know if I am, b****ut if you read to the end of this chapter, thank you for sticking with it.

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**

Doctor Rodney McKay was having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.

It was not, as you might think, the worst day of his life. It was only the third worst. The worst was commonly accepted by himself and everyone around him as the day he almost drowned at the bottom of the ocean on a planet roughly 0.92 mega-parsecs away from the one on which he was born.

The second worst was known only to him and it'll stay that way, thank you very much.

Of course, this terrible, horrible, no good very bad day had almost nothing to do with the fact that only ten hours before the planet on which he stood (or rather, floated) disappeared. Instead, the occurrence with which he was currently so depressed, and the reason for which he was hiding in the furthest corner of his smallest lab was simple.

He had, in no way shape or form, saved the day.

This was rather a new occurrence for the good Doctor and one which, he hoped, he would never have to suffer through again.

"McKay?" The voice – possibly the very last in the universe he wanted to be hearing at that particular moment – called out from the doorway.

When he didn't even raise his head a fraction of an inch, John Sheppard came to stand in front of him. Dejected, Rodney looked up.

"Are you going to sulk all night? There's a huge party in the mess."

"I've got nothing to celebrate," Doctor McKay announced.

"Rodney, really. Are you going to be pissed off at all of us because it wasn't your bright idea?"

"Yes."

The Colonel clearly wasn't sure what to do with that response. "Well then, sit here on your own, in the dark, and sulk all you want. But you could, for _once in your life_, deal with the fact that someone else beat you to the answer. It's not the end of the world."

"Yes it is."

"Fine." And John Sheppard went in search of a beer. Or whatever the Athosian equivalent actually was; he'd been a bit scared to ask Teyla what her people made it with.

The astrophysicist who had not saved the day continued to bemoan his lot in life...at least until he fell asleep at his desk.

And woke up in the morning to find, strangely enough, that he was the only human being in the entire city.

At least the planet was still there.

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Arómenë ©2008 


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